State's Small Airports Provide Big Benefits

State's Small-time Airports Providing Big-time Benefits

August 24, 1992|By STEVE SILK; Courant Travel Writer

Psst. Don't say it too loudly, but there's an alternative to flying out of big, bustling airports.

Bruce Lawson knows a low-key place where parking is a breeze; you can stroll to the terminal in a couple of minutes, then walk out the back door to hop aboard your flight. A single connecting flight in Chicago could take you as far as, say, New Delhi, India.

Even many travel agents within 10 miles of the facility don't know it exists.

Other regional airports in the state -- Groton/New London and Sikorsky Memorial in Stratford -- also offer alternatives for travelers weary of battling traffic and crowds.

Using them might save you a couple bucks, too. Ed Cleary, general manager for customer services at United Airlines in New Haven, says round-trip fares from New Haven to some destinations can be as much as $60 lower than those from Bradley International Airport. Parking at smaller airports is usually cheaper, too. (At Groton, it's free.)

In spite of the advantages, regional airport managers in Connecticut say their services remain unknown to most potential travelers and that they could accommodate greater numbers of passengers -- if only the public knew they existed.

Despite its relative anonymity, 61-yearold Tweed-New Haven Airport is finally headed for success. The city-owned airport turned a profit for fiscal 1991, its first since 1984. No longer the preserve of turboprops, the airport began jet service in May 1991, when United Airlines 737s began taking off for Chicago. Since then, airport use has soared. In April 1991, for example, 4,310 passengers boarded planes at Tweed. A year later the number more than doubled, to 9,729. Two months later, in June 1992, a total of 12,149 people hopped planes there.

Now, the once-sleepy airport is bursting at the seams at peak hours. "It's like a sardine can," says Lawson. But a crowd at Tweed doesn't match what you'd see in a busy ticket line at Bradley.

Space is so tight that USAir had to postpone inauguration of jet service to its Pittsburgh hub. Hopes were for a spring 1992 start, but now the airline has to wait until renovations carve out adequate counter space. Plans are already aloft for a new terminal nearly eight times larger than the existing one.

The squat, two-story pile of cinderblock and butter-colored brick that serves as Tweed's terminal looks like the sort of airport you would see on some castaway Caribbean isle -- right down to the slowly spinning ceiling fans. Tiny private planes flutter skyward from empty runways. Skycaps are non-existent, and boarding a plane means crossing the tarmac and climbing a portable staircase. The place might not look like much, but in this case, no frills also means no hassles.

At Tweed, "There's no anxiety, there's no chaos," says Gary Fredericks, of Middletown. Fredericks, just back from Atlanta, says his home is halfway between Bradley and Tweed, but he has come to prefer the simplicity of flying from New Haven. "Last time I was here, I had been on a plane 27 hours coming in from Hawaii. I got [to the airport], got in my car and was out of here in three minutes."

But some find the lack of conveniences an imposition. Travelers with some disabilities may find departing from Tweed (or Groton or Stratford) less convenient. Terminals are accessible, and handicapped parking spaces available, but because the smaller airports do not have jetways (the accordionlike passages that link terminal to plane), boarding could be a degrading experience. At Tweed, passengers in wheelchairs board via a specialized loading platform that is raised to the plane's galley.

Carl Voelkening of Las Vegas, Nev., flies in and out of Tweed whenever he visits his parents in Durham, even though he dislikes walking out on the tarmac. "It's too oldfashioned," he says. "It doesn't seem safe."

Still, he likes the airport. "It's quaint. There's not so much hustle and bustle."

Air travel for Connecticut residents has long been dominated by the big boys such as Bradley International Airport, John F. Kennedy International and La Guardia airports in New York and Logan International Airport in Boston. But the pattern is starting to shift. As larger airports grow increasingly congested, passengers face bigger and bigger battles just getting to the ticket counter. Downstate travelers departing from New York can easily spend more time getting to and from the airport than in the air.